I've noticed that alot of people don't understand what lag is. I've actually had someone think that starting Mabi from Chrome would result in less lag than starting Mabi from Firefox, since Chrome is faster than FF.
Then somebody else said "I still have half the space on my computer left so Mabi should run fast!"
So....I've taken on the job to educate some of you on what lag is.
Generally, "lag" is what we use as a generic term for any "messed up slow" gameplay we might experience. It can be caused by many things, slow internet, bad computer, not enough ram, too many programs running, etc. Lets break it down.
[SIZE="4"]Hardware lag[/SIZE]
Most likely, if your computer is a few years old, or if it's cheap as hell, you probably have what I call "hardware lag." That is, your framerate freezes every once in a while (say, when a critical hit occurs) or it takes you forever to log in / change channels / change maps.
All this means is that your computer sucks too much to keep up with the game. It may or may not have anything to do with your internet.
Now, why your computer is slow is difficult to tell. If you have under 1GB of ram, running any other applications than Mabinogi might slow down your gameplay.
It slows it down because of this: When you start mabi, the entire program is "copied" into your RAM, so that it can "talk" to your computer faster. If your computer talked to Mabinogi on the harddrive, it will be slow as hell since your hard drive inside your computer has to move around in order to "read" the info on how to run the game. Thats why all programs are loaded onto RAM before it runs. So, if you have less than 1GB of ram (you can check this by right clicking "My computer" on your Desktop or Start menu and clicking Properties.) you should close out all other programs before playing Mabi.
Speaking of hard drives, the free space on your hard drive DOES NOT AFFECT how "fast" your computer is. The only affect your hard drive has on your system is if it is fragmented, that means the data inside is mixed up physically up from downloading stuff / deleting stuff, and it takes a while for it to "find" the files you need. You can just fix that by defragmenting it. (Just Google on how to do that.)
Now, if its not your RAM, it could be how your computer handles the graphics. Now, when you run a game with 3D graphics like Mabinogi, your computer has to process or "think about" a lot of stuff to get the pictures on your screen. Usually, your processor does the processing. Your processor is also called the CPU.
Note that the CPU is NOT the "tower" of the computer as it is usually called, the CPU/processor is actually just a small chip inside the computer that does all the processing.
Like I just said, usually it's the CPU/processor that does all this processing, but generally, most computers have the Graphics card do all the "thinking" work for the game. Now, a lot of computers (Home computers, low end computers, laptops) do not have graphics cards. Instead, they use integrated graphics. That means, the processor acts as the graphics card. Depending on what integrated graphics system your computer uses, this may or may not handle Mabi well.
That's about it on the hardware section.
[SIZE="4"]Network lag[/SIZE]
If you have a "good" computer, and your mabi gameplay experience still isn't perfect, then your internet probably sucks and you have what I call "network lag."
You probably get hit a lot, your skills take a while to load, when you have smash you keep running at the monster over and over again, and ranged attack is pretty impossible for you.
Note that network lag in games have nothing to do with how "fast" you can download. Most people with DSL can download at a rate of at least 1 megabit per second. That's about 300ish kilobytes.
However, download speed is completely separate from "ping." Ping is basically the time (in milliseconds) that it takes for your computer to send a packet (a burst) of information from your modem/router sitting next to your computer to a server.
Since we're dealing with Mabi, we're going to worry about our ping with Nexon. Not Nexon's website, however, but the server that runs the game.
So lets say you have a ping of 500ms. That means, when you load your windmill or magnum shot or whatever, it takes 500 milliseconds for your computer to send a bit of information to Nexon telling it "Hey, I loaded smash, yo." and it takes 500 more milliseconds for nexon to tell your computer "Okay, your smash hit that goblin for 4000 damage. You are pro!" That means, it'll take a half a second after you've loaded smash before everyone else in the game sees that you've loaded smash. So, thats why you get that retarded smash lag where you keep running at the monster.
You can fix this by doing the nagle algorithm. There's a guide on how to do this. Basically, nagle is a stupid thing on your computer that makes your ping high so you don't have to pay as much for bandwidth. Nowadays bandwidth doesn't matter anymore since we've got loads of it so most games that you need low ping to play (First person shooters) disable the nagle for you while you play it. However, devcat is weird and didn't do that, so you have to disable nagle on your computer itself.
Gamebooster: Closes unneeded programs and services before you play: http://www.iobit.com/gamebooster.html
Halfslashed's guide to not lagging: http://www.halfslashed.com/tutorials/lag.html